In conversation with: Dame Elizabeth Anionwu

I was in a Catholic children’s home in Birmingham until the age of nine and it was here that I knew I wanted to be a nurse. I had eczema and it was so painful when the nuns used to rip my dressings off. But there was one nun who used what we would now call distraction therapy – she’d say words that sound rude to a child, such as “bottom”, and it would have me in such fits of laughter that I didn’t feel the pain. I thought she was the most fantastic woman in the world.  

I discovered she was a nurse and decided that was what I wanted to do with my life.

What hurdles did you have to overcome to become a nurse?

When I was 16 or 17, I applied to four London teaching hospitals to do nursing. All of them asked for my photo plus the name of my father and his occupation, but I didn’t know it as I hadn’t met him at that point. I had seven O-levels with good grades, and I didn’t get a reply from any of them. I couldn’t understand why I didn’t even get any feedback. That was the first barrier.

For my memoirs I interviewed many colleagues to see how they viewed me and one of them who I trained with – a good friend of mine to this day – commented she was worried about what my future would be like in nursing as a black woman. We all aimed to be ward sisters – that was the natural career progression – and in the late 60s she hadn’t seen any black ward sisters. At the time, I hadn’t fully observed that. 

It was tough. We know there was a lot of discrimination. There still is.

How did you feel when you started your training?

I was quite shy. I didn’t really get confident until my final year – there was always butterflies in my stomach when I had to change my ward. I used to spend a lot of time in the sluice [dirty utility room] sterilising the bed pans. It was my safe place when I needed to be alone. What helped me with shyness was when I found the ability to chat to patients and ask them about themselves. Making people laugh always helped me enormously. 

Elizabeth as a staff nurse in 1968

When patients are so-called “difficult” you just need to find things in common. There was a lady I cared for once who I discovered had Irish heritage. I told her about my Irish/Nigerian roots and that I did Irish dancing as a child. She couldn’t believe it. There was nobody around on the ward, so I showed her some of my Irish dancing. That really got her laughing.

What are your biggest achievements?  

Being the UK’s very first sickle cell and thalassaemia nurse specialist. And helping to establish the Sickle Cell Society.

When I was a health visitor in Brent there were several families with young children who had sickle cell anaemia. I recall a mother whose child was having severe pains and she was utterly distraught that she couldn’t take the pain away. I felt helpless and ashamed as I didn’t know anything about it myself. That feeling turned to anger that grew deep inside my belly for the lack of preparation we’d been given as nurses to care for people with sickle cell disease. I had to educate myself and do something about it.

The desire became even stronger when, in 1972, I found my father and discovered one of my cousin’s had sickle cell disease. 

You successfully co-led the campaign for a statue of Mary Seacole – the first named memorial statue of a black woman in the UK. Can you explain its importance?

This image of my granddaughter says it all...
 

Dig a little deeper and it’s often personal reasons that drive people to fight for things. My personal reason is growing up in a totally white environment, not seeing anybody like myself. As a child I used to wonder: why am I not seeing characters like me in children’s books? Why don’t I see people like me on TV? 

The statue at St Thomas’ Hospital is a person of mixed race, a nurse, she’s feisty and she’s a woman. We needed to raise a lot of money and it was tough. It took over 12 years to get there, but once we’d built up momentum we knew we could do it. The moment it was unveiled was so wonderful, the sun was shining. I’ll always remember it.

In what ways do you feel black nursing staff are discriminated against in the NHS? 

From the personal perspective of a black nurse, the evidence is clear that many have been deprived of promotion prospects and not always been treated with dignity and respect, just because of their skin colour. I am not talking about all nurses but a significant number. They are seeing others with less qualifications rise above them. The ultimate insult is that they are often then asked to train those who have been promoted. 

The responsibility here lies with the directors of nursing, those with the powers to promote. They need to have an open-door policy, go out and reach black nurses and all BAME staff working for them who feel they have not got to where they should be, and look at where those individuals are in the organisation and who is at the top. They need to act quickly. It’s not a glass ceiling for black nurses, it’s a brick wall. 

What concerns me the most is the high proportion of BAME nursing staff who have died or been very ill from COVID-19. 

Many BAME staff don’t have the confidence to raise concerns about their safety. And they wonder why nurses are angry about this? The sad fact is it has caused illness and death – it’s one thing to not get the nursing promotion if you’re discriminated against, it’s another thing to lose your life.